On the formal tip, I am a nationally-recognized consultant and facilitator, with three decades of experience grounded in de-colononial, anti-racist, liberatory frameworks. I hold a BA in African American Studies, an MA in Arts & Critical Pedagogy, a Masters in Library and Information Science (MLIS) with an emphasis on public engagement, and am working towards a Post-Master’s Certificate in community archiving. I also am a certified trainer-of-trainers in Advancing Youth Development, have a certificate in Healing Centered Engagement from Flourish Agenda, and am part of the Coaching for Healing, Justice, and Liberation network. I am blessed to learn from, work alongside, and be held accountable by a deep community of elders, movement leaders, artists, and other Jedis. The Force is strong with us.

My Journey

I’m the daughter of an educator and a healer, born and raised in the 1970’s in a small hamlet of Washington, DC called Anacostia {Nacotchtank land}. After graduating from DC Public Schools, I went off to Oberlin College {Erie land} on a full-ride and with dreams of writing, being a cultural documentarian, and creating a just world. 

I began my career three decades ago as a language arts (heavy on the arts) and social studies (heavy on the justice) teacher at a public middle school in San Francisco {Ohlone land}. And after graduate studies at New York University in the use of the arts to develop critical consciousness, I continued in the classroom by teaching documentary production and youth media with high school students and emerging adults in both New York City {Lenape land} and back in my hometown of DC. 

That work led me to public libraries, where I developed programs in oral history, photography, media production, and youth-led information services for young adults at DC Public Library, in partnership with NPR, the Smithsonian, Library of Congress, and several community media organizations. 

Because I understood that transformative youth programs can not be sustained without shifting the systems and cultures of the organizations they exist within, I also advocated for and supported the adult staff at DCPL in gaining foundational competencies in youth development. 

My work at the libraries attracted the interest of the city’s executive office, and I was asked to become the director of strategic initiatives at a youth development intermediary, working with city department leaders, youth, and community leaders to design a comprehensive youth development strategy for the city of Washington, DC.

Then came rapid seismic shifts in my personal life—marriage, the birth of my first child, the passing of a parent, and a move across country. 

Arriving in my new home of Los Angeles {Tongva land}, I was fortunate to be connected to and supported by a beautiful community of artists and culture bearers. I began a tenure as executive director of CONTRA-TIEMPO Activist Dance Theater Company, where I honed a practice of deep community listening and engagement, using the arts to co-create stories, visions, and action towards manifesting the world we know can exist.

I also began working with an extraordinary team of artists and arts administrators to bring the People’s Institute for Survival and Beyond (PISAB) “Undoing Racism” framework to the Los Angeles arts community, to ensure a shared language and context for our cultural organizing work. 

I brought that same framework to the LA County Department of Arts and Culture’s arts education team to help guide their youth development work within juvenile justice facilities and within Black and brown communities that had not had equitable access to arts investments. With fire in our bellies, my team set to redesign county processes to be more supportive of teaching artists and of community-defined programming; we gathered an intergenerational circle of cultural organizers to create a framework for arts-based healing centered engagement; and I joined the county’s Youth Justice Advisory Group being convened by the W. Haywood Burns Institute to create a new vision for LA County’s most vulnerable youth.

That work led to the creation of the powerful Youth Justice Reimagined vision, and I was asked to join the team as a senior consultant to help bring that vision to life.

Across my career, I’ve had the deep honor of working with some of the most brilliant, creative youth, community organizers, artists, elders, local government leaders, and all sorts of other good trouble-makers. Dreaming, strategizing, building community, sharing stories, learning.

And now here we are…

In this moment of extraordinary possibility and extraordinary pain, I am called to work at that swirling, magical nexus of past, present, and future to help us navigate the storm–guided by the maps and blueprints of liberation laid out by our ancestors, grounded in our powerful inner knowingness, moving towards the horizon of our wildest dreams.

We will win.